Summon and e-Books: FAQ

Below are several common questions you might ask about how the 360 Core e-books service interacts with the Summon service.

How does the 360 Core e-books service function in the Summon service?

Clients can subscribe to e-books databases in the Client Center for use in the Summon service. The Summon service receives the identifiers affiliated with the e-books in the rights feed from the Client Center, and displays the appropriate citations in Summon.

Should we add our e-books to our Client Center holdings?

Yes. By tracking all of your subscription resources in the Client Center, your ability to manage e-resources will be maximized. We recommend you track all subscription resources in your profile, including e-books. While book-level records will be included in your own OPAC records, book chapter-level content is not included there. If the Summon service indexes a chapter from one of the e-books that you subscribe to, the only way your users will have access to the additional chapter content is if you add the e-books in the Client Center.

How important is it to also make e-books discoverable in Summon via MARC records in my OPAC?

It can be quite important, depending on the extent that your e-books are/are not already covered in the Summon Index. Providing an e-book record from your OPAC ensures that the item is discoverable.

The match-and-merge logic in the Summon service will merge any duplicate e-book records listed both in your OPAC as well as in your Client Center profile. In such cases, the user will be presented with a single record containing links to the available content in your catalog, and the available content in your subscription holdings.

If you prefer to avoid duplication between e-book records in your OPAC and e-books listed in your Client Center profile, you can of course choose to make e-books discoverable in the Summon service either via your OPAC records or via your Client Center profile. We do, however, suggest both methods given the particular benefit that each method provides (as described above).

How does the Summon service link to e-books?

The Summon service links to subscribed e-books via either the library's catalog, the library's link resolver, or via a direct URL to the item. Open-access e-books -- like those from HathiTrust, Open Library, and Project Gutenburg -- are linked directly.

When does the Summon service link to an e-book's entry in our catalog, as opposed to the URL in the e-book record's 856 field?

During the Summon service implementation process, libraries provide Serials Solutions with the linking syntax and bibliographic record fields. With that information, we create links from Summon to the catalog based on the bibliographic number. The only scenario where links to the catalog are not used is when records are labeled with the content type of e-book, e-journal or journal, and have only one 856 link in the MARC record. If more than one 856 link is present in the MARC record, a link to the catalog will be used to make sure users see the options available to them.

Can a search be limited to e-book content only?

Yes, you can limit search results to e-books only by selecting first the Book / eBook filter under The Content Type facet, and then select Items with full-text online filter under the Refine your Search section on the left-hand side of the search page. [New September 2011]